We turned off the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II and my body swayed with the motion of the taxi; happy to finally be in Rome. After days of stressing out about meeting my niece at the airport (since we both arrived from different countries), I was finally able to relax in the back of the taxi. [...]

At one time I was going to major in Engineering. But as much as my father would have loved me to follow in his footsteps and choose a responsible career, I decided to pass up Engineering for the exciting career of Accounting. Whoo! Obviously accounting wasn’t really my calling either, and neither was Information Technology, [...]

I instinctively made it to the office building; it had been two years since I was there and even though the buildings around it had changed, the Ger to Ger office building stood out to me teasing my memory and providing me flashes of deja vu. I remembered the stairs, the odd sculpture outside the [...]

As I drove the gradual incline, the car downshifted to a lower gear, jerked and slowly inched up the road; I could feel just how hard it seemed to be working to get up to the Mauna Kea visitor center.  Hawaii has the tallest mountain on earth.  No, I haven’t lost my mind, and no, [...]

After driving around the entire Big Island for a week I could appreciate the diversity of landscapes, however today is when the all of the puzzle pieces come together. The lava field piece connects with the rainforest piece. The brown desert piece connects to the turquoise waters of the coast. The towering mountains connecta with [...]

The trees look as if they have plotted a slow attack to take over the road. Vines hang down trying to slyly block my way and hinder my vision. The road isn’t straight nor does it have any defined shoulders or boundaries. The asphalt is laid around each tree trunk making the road look like [...]

The radio plays old Van Morison tunes as I sing along in the car with my eyes peeled on the Chain of Craters Road wondering what I will encounter next. Even the radio station on the Big Island has the call letters – LAVA – I let out a little chuckle at the silliness of [...]

Before I departed on the Mongol Rally, when I told people about what I was doing this summer they were surprised, but consistently it was one topic about the epic road trip that fascinated people most. It wasn’t the inappropriate car or the length of the trip. It wasn’t the fact that my team had [...]